Thinking about Ecclesiastes, what is the Preacher’s favorite word?  Any guesses? Vanity. “Vanity of vanities” has been his big idea. Hevel was our key Hebrew word, meaning breath/vapor. Life under the sun is fleeting. That was one nuance. Another nuance was that life is subject to futility. Frustrations abound in life under the sun. But the last nuance was that life can also get absurd.

So, I have a question regarding that absurdity. How do you respond when life’s absurdities weigh you down? Specifically, how do you respond when the absurdity of injustice weighs you down? Numerous burdens can cause a crisis of faith, but a common one is the absurdity of injustice. People in office abuse their power. The righteous are overlooked while the wicked get honored. Courts have released the guilty and condemned the innocent. And no matter what you say, or how you vote, or what sort of influence for good you try to be, injustices keep popping up.

It’s like an endless Whack-a-Mole game. You think you’ve dealt with one, and another is there—“We’ve got our leader, but I didn’t expect him to do that. That judge was good, but the jury was awful. Great policy over here, but I didn’t expect it to create a loophole for this terrible practice.” And on and on it goes. Such injustices have caused some to question whether there’s even a God of order at all.

How do you respond when the absurdity of injustice weighs you down? Our passage will help us process and answer that question. Let’s read chapter 8 and see how God’s word might strengthen our faith when we’re weighed down by injustice. Verse 1…

¹ Who is like the wise? And who knows the interpretation of a thing? A man’s wisdom makes his face shine, and the hardness of his face is changed. ² I say: Keep the king’s command, because of God’s oath to him. ³ Be not hasty to go from his presence. Do not take your stand in an evil cause, for he does whatever he pleases. ⁴ For the word of the king is supreme, and who may say to him, “What are you doing?” ⁵ Whoever keeps a command will know no evil thing, and the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way. ⁶ For there is a time and a way for everything, although man’s trouble lies heavy on him. ⁷ For he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how it will be? ⁸ No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death. There is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it. ⁹ All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun, when man had power over man to his hurt. ¹⁰ Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. ¹¹ Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. ¹² Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. ¹³ But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God. ¹⁴ There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. ¹⁵ And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun. ¹⁶ When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one’s eyes see sleep, ¹⁷ then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.

Our passage begins with a question: “Who is like the wise? And who knows the interpretation of a thing?” The implied answer is, “Not many.” The question follows the Preacher’s diligent search for wisdom in 7:23-29. There we learned that wisdom is hard to find when righteousness is lacking. Wisdom is precious, but it’s rare among sinners. It’s like digging for diamonds in a deep and dark mine.

Ah, but to discover the diamond brightens your face. Finding wisdom will transform you. “A man’s wisdom,” he says, “makes his face shine, and the hardness of his face is changed.” In Deuteronomy 28:50, “hardness of face” describes a ruthless nation that shows no mercy. By contrast, God’s face shining on someone signified his mercy. Perhaps these idioms mean something like this: finding wisdom makes you more like the merciful God and less like the hardened nations.

Which becomes a helpful segue. Because the rest of chapter 8 addresses several absurdities you and I might face; and it’s difficult not to become hardened in the face of them. Absurdities like governing authorities using their power to harm—verses 2-9. Or people honoring the wicked and forgetting the righteous—verses 10-13. Or the righteous getting treated like the wicked, and the wicked like the righteous—verses 14-15. And at the end of the day, none of us being able to figure it out—verses 16-17. You have felt these absurdities in relation to our own political context. How do you respond when those absurdities weigh you down?

When authorities harm, anticipate God’s judgment.

Let’s get into each of them and find out. The first absurdity comes in verses 2-9. The scene involves a king and someone serving in his court. But verse 9 tells us more: “All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun, when man had power over man to his hurt.” The king of verses 2-8, then, is not a good one. Sometimes, he uses power to harm others. How should the wise respond?

Well, look at verse 2, “I say: Keep the king’s command, because of God’s oath to him.” In ancient Israel, God’s oath to David stood behind the kings in Jerusalem. Perhaps such a backdrop exists here. But other translations suggest this isn’t an oath by God but an oath to God—perhaps made by somebody serving the king. Either way, the emphasis lies on obeying the king’s authority as part of obeying God’s authority.

This wisdom is like that of Romans 13:1. “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Or 1 Peter 2:13-14, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.” Both Paul and Peter wrote that when pagan rulers used their power to harm. Our general bent should be to obey governing authorities. Yes, Ron Swanson, even you!

Verses 3-5 then add to that general submission. “Do not make haste to leave his presence.” Let’s say you disagree with the king. It’s not wise to storm from his presence. You must show respect. Ecclesiastes 10:4 puts it this way, “If the anger of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place, for calmness will lay great offenses to rest.”

Verse 3 also says this: “Do not take your stand in an evil cause, for he does whatever he pleases. For the word of the king is supreme, and who may say to him, ‘What are you doing?’ Whoever keeps a command will know no evil thing.”

Perhaps the Preacher is now qualifying the limits of submission. Stay obedient. Stay respectful. But if the king commands something evil, don’t take your stand with him. Such a qualification would agree with other places in Scripture—like when the Hebrew midwives disobeyed Pharaoh’s command to kill the male children, or when the apostles disobeyed the authorities’ command to stop teaching about Jesus.

But you could also read this another way. Perhaps the limits of obedience are not yet in view, and he’s appealing to common sense. Stay obedient. Stay respectful. And don’t take your stand in an evil cause (or, literally, “evil word”) like inciting violence, like spreading lies, like plotting revolt. Why? Because the king does whatever he pleases. He will squash you. But if you keep his command, you will “know no evil word.” He’s not going to come after you. Taken that way, it’s not too far from what 1 Peter 3:13 says, “Who’s there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?”

In other words, honor your president, even if you don’t like his policies; respect the police officer, even when he pulled you over for silly reasons; don’t get sarcastic with the customs agent when they question your whereabouts.

Now, I think you can make sense of this passage either way. But if you take the second interpretation, you don’t lose the qualification for submission. It just comes later in the text. Which brings us to the rest of verses 5-8. The ESV puts it this way: “But the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way. For there is a time and a way for everything.” That could mean the wise will know the right time to do the right thing.

But the Hebrew behind “just way” in verses 5 and 6—everywhere else in Ecclesiastes, it’s translated “judgment.” So, listen to the KJV which is closer to a word-for-word translation of the Hebrew here. It says, “a wise man’s heart [knows] both time and judgment. Because to every purpose there is time and judgment.”

The wording recalls what we learned in chapter 3. God has a time for everything; and he has a judgment. In 3:16-17, the Preacher sees “that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness.” But what does he consider in his heart? “I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work.” Heart, time, judgment—same words that we find here. The wise know in their hearts that God will judge. That’s how you make it when life’s absurdities weigh you down—when authorities harm, anticipate God’s judgment.

Now, that’s not to say the burdens suddenly lift. These instructions don’t change the absurdities of life under the sun. They only teach us how to respond when the absurdities come. Moreover, we still face severe limitations under the sun. We’re limited in knowledge—verse 7. We’re powerless over death—verse 8. Rulers will lead people into wars, some of which we can’t escape—also verse 8.

And in moments like these, when man senses how powerless he is before evil, it can lead to some sinful responses. It can seem like we have no other option but to adopt the evil strategies of our opponents. “Fight fire with fire,” so to speak. “Give ‘em a taste of their own medicine.” “If they spread lies about us, we’ll spread lies about them.” “Whatever it takes to regain control and take our country back. Just do it already!”

But know this, the Preacher says in verse 8, “wickedness is powerless to deliver those who are given to it.” There’s your qualification for submission. Yes, obey the authorities. Yes, stay respectful in their presence. Don’t be a troublemaker. But also, don’t for a second be tricked into their wickedness; and don’t for a second adopt wickedness to defeat them. Wickedness won’t deliver them, nor will it deliver you.

Well, then, what are we left with? When we’re often powerless to control these absurd injustices, do we have any hope? Do we have anything to plant our feet on? Yes. God will judge the wicked. Ecclesiastes is driving toward that end. 12:14, “God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” The wise keep that in their hearts. And it informs their future hope and their present obedience.

Don’t we find the same wisdom embodied in our Lord Jesus? In the person of Jesus, we find both submission to governing authorities and trust in God’s judgment. He was the ultimate King. Yet for our sake he humbled himself. He submitted himself to wicked rulers. The people expected a Messiah to come and overthrow Rome. But Jesus said, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Matt 22:21). Jesus submitted by allowing the soldiers to arrest him. He submitted to the Sanhedrin’s trial. They accused him falsely before Herod, but he didn’t say a word. Pilate observed his innocence. Yet Jesus submitted to a governor who failed to exercise his authority rightly.

Why? To do his Father’s will. To die on the cross for our sins—so that we might escape God’s condemnation at final judgment. Our Lord embodied submission to governing authorities, even when that meant he suffered. And 1 Peter 2:20 says that he suffered this way to leave you an example, “that you might follow in his steps.”

But you know what else Peter says? “When [Jesus] was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” Jesus endured the absurdities of injustice by knowing in his heart that God will judge the wicked. We must follow in his steps…

When judgment is delayed, keep fearing God.

You might object: “Well, that ain’t coming quick enough! I’m tired of waiting around! The evil is just getting worse.” The Preacher knows. He’s aware. Which is why he mentions the delay of judgment next.

Verses 10-13 present another heavy burden under the sun. “Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity.” Wicked people once did wicked things in this city. Even worse, they pretended to know God. It’d be like a president implementing wicked policies Monday through Friday, then showing up on Sunday to put on a good face, or to pretend that God is on his side. But then he dies; and the people give him an honorable burial while the righteous are forgotten.[i]

Verse 11 makes it even worse: “Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.” That’s true to our experience in general—like when a parent doesn’t discipline a child, or when a government doesn’t enforce its laws. The sinful heart usually turns to more evil.

But it’s also true when God delays his judgment. Romans 2 says that God’s delay in judgment is a kindness. It’s a mercy designed to lead people to repentance. But many treat that delay as an excuse for more sin: “If they’re getting away with it, so will I.” Verse 12 indicates that some might even live a long life while choosing evil.

Injustices like that burden us. It weighs heavily on the heart. In some cases, it might even lead someone to envy the wicked. Asaph admits this about himself in Psalm 73. He says, “I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”

But the Preacher warns: in the end, it will only go well for one kind of person, the person who fears God. Verse 12, “Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God.”

What’s the point? When judgment is delayed, keep fearing God. Notice how he describes it: “because they fear before him.” Literally, “because they fear before [God’s] face.” In the late 1500s, a theologian named Zacharias Ursinus once made a distinction between servile fear and filial fear. Servile fear is a slavish, fearful anxiety that God is out to get us. It doesn’t draw near to God but runs from God. But filial fear arises from confidence and love to God. You take God seriously, much like you’d take a loving Father seriously. You’re mindful of God’s presence and majesty. Filial fear drives away the fear of man and the fear of death; and it produces an obedience to God.

That filial fear is what the Preacher has in view here. When things get sideways, when justice is delayed, don’t abandon the fear of the Lord.

At times, you might even face tensions like the one you may have felt between verses 12 and 13. A sinner might do evil a hundred times and prolong his life. But in verse 13 he says, “it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow.” Well, which is it? And that’s the point he wants you to feel. That’s the dilemma we all feel in this life under the sun. The wicked aren’t supposed to prosper. Yet we keep hitting exception after exception after exception in which they do. It makes you want to give up. It makes you question what’s real sometimes.

The Preacher sympathizes with you. He’s trying to piece together the same jigsaw puzzle we are; and we don’t have a picture on the box to go with it. We can’t see how all the pieces fit together. So, sometimes we’re just left staring at two pieces. He’s saying that even then, when you feel that tension, keep fearing God. Keep walking before his face. Nothing about God has changed—he is still worthy of your fear. His commandments are still good. He is just. He is the Righteous One; and he will judge.

How do we know he will judge? How do we know that even if the sinner prolongs his life, that ultimately God will deal with him. Because God has already set some pieces of the puzzle in place. Do you know that we have more assurance of judgment than the Preacher did when he wrote these things? How so? Because God raised Jesus from the dead. Acts 17:31, “he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Judgment might be delayed in this life under the sun. Sinners might go on with their evil a hundred times over. But it won’t always be this way. The true King sits at God’s right hand above the sun, and he’s putting all God’s enemies beneath his feet under the sun. Jesus is different from those others in verse 8 who have no power over the day of death. Jesus conquered the grave, and he owns the keys of Death and Hades. His kingdom will never fade away. So, keep fearing God.

If you’re not a Christian, know that you will one day face God in judgment. You will stand before the throne of Jesus and give an account. Your only hope is to place your trust in Jesus and submit to his lordship.

When perplexities abound, trust God’s providence.

Another weight we often feel—verse 14, “There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity/absurd.”

In a world with moral order, we expect the righteous to be rewarded, and the wicked to get punished. But on many occasions, humans don’t deal that way with each other. On this side of Eden, things get turned upside down: “there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked.” It doesn’t make any sense! It doesn’t square with how things ought to be. In fact, life under the sun can become such a conundrum, the Preacher has a hard time making sense of it all.

You can hear his own struggle in verses 16-17: “When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one’s eyes see sleep, then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.”

The Preacher doesn’t doubt God’s sovereign control. It’s all “the work of God,” he calls it in verse 16. The Preacher also doesn’t doubt God’s ultimate justice—listen again to his conclusion in 12:14, “God will bring every deed into judgment.” What the Preacher doubts is his own ability to understand how absurdities like these—the injustices we experience in our day to day—how could they ever square up?

I imagine the disciples experienced this same struggle when the crowds asked Pilate to release a notorious criminal, Barabbas, and at the same time shouted about Jesus, “Let him be crucified!” Could they not have been thinking in that moment, “There are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous, and there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked”? Might they have been wracking their brains, trying to sort it all out and they just couldn’t? From what we know, all of them experienced a crisis of faith. Because it didn’t add up!

Until Jesus rose from the dead and explained it to them again. Then they knew—God was at work, even in the most twisted, unjust events of all, the crucifixion of God’s Son. That’s not to say that every instance of injustice is like the cross in that God is somehow acting to save. It’s only to say that the cross reveals how God might work even through an injustice like that to achieve his good ends. Solomon couldn’t figure out the puzzle. The disciples couldn’t figure it out. We can’t figure it all out either. But at the cross we’re reminded: God is in control, God is just, and God is good.

The point is this: when perplexities abound, trust God’s providence. When you can’t yet make sense of how everything fits together, know that God has a plan. The cross and resurrection of Jesus assure us that God is at work even in the twisted and crooked things of this life under the sun. Under the sun, we can’t make sense of it all. But above the sun, God knows the whole puzzle. He knows how all the pieces fit and how they will display something beautiful in the end. He’s taking the world to a good place without absurdities, a better country without injustice, a new creation without sin.

When absurdities loom, still enjoy God’s gifts.

Which means, lastly, when absurdities loom, still enjoy God’s gifts. Righteous living today doesn’t guarantee protection from absurdities tomorrow. You don’t know what injustices might come your way. That’s in God’s hands. So, instead of exhausting yourself trying to control tomorrow, enjoy the gifts God has given today.

Verse 15, “And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.” When we started Ecclesiastes, I summarized its message like this: wisdom sees life’s futilities and navigates them by fearing God and enjoying his gifts. Earlier, we covered fearing God. Now, he says enjoy God’s gifts.

No doubt, the world is groaning. We live in a world after Genesis 3. These injustices are part of that groaning. But the presence of injustice doesn’t negate the fact that the world is still gift. Notice how he puts it: “his life that God has given.” The wise acknowledge both. We can’t be naïve about the groaning of this world. But we also can’t miss the goodness of our God. His gifts are vast.

Genesis 8:22, God’s covenant with Noah includes universal gifts for all mankind: “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.” Psalm 65, God established the mountains, girding them with might. He makes the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy. He causes pastures to overflow and meadows to clothe themselves with flocks. In Psalm 19, he made honey to be sweet on your tongue, that you might know the goodness of his word.

Acts 14:17, he gives rains from heaven, fruitful seasons, “satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” 1 Timothy 4:3, he gives marriage and food to “be received with thanksgiving.” Acts 17:25, God gives “life and breath and everything.” Every day he just keeps giving and giving and giving.

Even as rulers use their power to harm, even as people honor the wicked, even as the righteous get treated like the wicked, even though his creatures do not honor him as God or give him thanks—our generous God keeps giving more.

Including his own Son. Despite our ungrateful and rebellious hearts, he gave his own Son. That same Son came to a wedding at Cana, where the host ran out of wine. He has them fill jars to the brim with water, and then he turns the water into the best wine—a sign that he was bringing a day of true enjoyment, when “the mountains drip sweet wine, and all the hills flow with it;” when “the hills shall break forth into singing, and the trees of the field claps their hands.”

God is generous; and he wants you to enjoy his good gifts. How have gifts strengthened you in times when you’re weighed down? It could be an encouraging phone call, some chocolate and a card after a long week, a visit and flowers in the hospital, a thoughtful present on a birthday you thought everyone else had forgotten. Whatever it was, gifts like these can strengthen us to keep going when life weighs us down.

In a similar way, God does the same for us. He gives us good gifts to help us endure when the absurdities weigh us down. Not only are the gifts good in and of themselves (after all, God gave them), but they are also foretastes of the joy to come because of what Jesus’ death and resurrection secured. So, when you eat and drink, when you chase the kids around the yard and hear them laugh, when you hold your spouse’s hand or gather for a meal, when you sing on Sunday or share a gift during the week, enjoy God’s goodness in it. You are declaring by your enjoyment now that these absurdities will not always weigh us down. Jesus’ kingdom will finally lift all these burdens and bring us into a life of rest, freedom, and joy.

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[i] Hebrew can possibly be translated: “Then I observed the wicked buried, and the people entered and from the holy place they went out; but they became forgotten in the city, those who had done right.”